The Fault in Our Stars
by LoveIsAllYouNeed96
Summary: Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought him a few years, Sam has never been anything but terminal. Giving up the hunting life, South Dakota became his home. In his eighteenth year, when Bobby decides that he is depressed, Sam is forced to attend a support group where he meets a young girl by the name of Jessica Moore and her older brother Dean.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This is a AU re-write of The Fault in our Stars. I have changed some aspects of the story to accommodate Supernatural into it, so I hope you like it.

* * *

Late in the Winter of my eighteenth year, my father and Bobby decided I was depressed. Bobby is an old coot who lives up in South Dakota with not much more than an old wooden ramshackle house that looks as if it would blow down in a light wind, the scrap cars out in the yard, and an impressive library to his name. He helped out my Dad after my Mom died. Bobby also tried to talk my Dad out of becoming a hunter, stating that the life is no place for a child. My father, blinded by the pain of losing my Mom, ignored him and began searching for the thing that killed her. I have been a hunter ever since.

Well…until I was thirteen.

That's when everything in my life changed.

I found myself feeling more tired after every hunt, ate infrequently, and spent a lot more time sleeping.

Of course my Dad thought it was just me going through a hormonal stage in my life as I made the transition from a kid to a teenager. I wasn't exactly fat back then, but in the weeks that followed, I began to slowly lose weight until on a trip to Bobby's one day, I collapsed on the floor of his living room. When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed with Bobby and my father stood in the doorway with saddened expressions. The doctor explained everything, and that's when my life hit its all-time low.

I spent the time during my early teenage years at Bobby's after he had won the extremely heated argument over my health.

'He's sick enough already, John! What good is dragging him around the country with you gonna' do?' Bobby had shouted. 'He's gonna' need regular treatment until he fights this thing off, and if you can't offer him that, then the boy's staying here with me.'

And that had been that. Bobby's became my home, and Dad would pay a visit at least three times a week, usually having driven hours from various states across the country just to see me. Despite my attempts to tell him that I wouldn't break if he didn't make it back one night, Dad swore that he would always make it back to me if he could.

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.) But my Dad and Bobby believed I required treatment, so Bobby took me to see my Regular Doctor Mills, who agreed that I was veritably swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression, and that therefore my meds should be adjusted and also I should attend a weekly Support Group.

This Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying.

Dying is something I've thought about many times through my childhood after I found out about the supernatural and became a hunter. Considering the big questions like 'does Heaven actually exist?', because I obviously already knew that Hell did. I have always thought about which one I would go to. Heaven or Hell, because is there a space in Heaven for hunters? Would God (if it turned out that he actually did exist) allow hunters into Heaven? What would be his take on them? Because the Ten Commandments state 'Though shall not kill', but though shall not kill what? Do monsters and demons fit the bill, or are they exempt? These are the real questions, and I don't know why my Dad and Bobby always get so antsy when I ask these questions out loud. Because that's another thing about dying, no one else wants to talk about it, even though they're not the ones doing the dying.

The Support Group, of course, was depressing as hell. It met every Wednesday in the basement of a stone-walled Episcopal church shaped like a cross. We all sat in a circle right in the middle of the cross, where the two boards would have met, where the heart of Jesus would have been.

I noticed this because Garth, the Support Group Leader and only person over eighteen in the room, talked about the heart of Jesus every freaking meeting, all about how we, as young cancer survivors, were sitting right in Christ's very sacred heart and whatever.

So here's how it went in God's heart: The six or seven or ten of us walked/wheeled in, grazed at a decrepit selection of cookies and lemonade, sat down in the Circle of Trust, and listened to Garth recount for the thousandth time his depressingly miserable life story—how he had cancer in his balls and they thought he was going to die but he didn't die and now here he is, a full-grown adult in a church basement in the 137th nicest city in America, divorced, addicted to video games, mostly friendless, eking out a meager living by exploiting his cancertastic past, slowly working his way toward a master's degree that will not improve his career prospects, waiting, as we all do, for the sword of Damocles to give him the relief that he escaped lo those many years ago when cancer took both of his nuts but spared what only the most generous soul would call his life.

AND YOU TOO MIGHT BE SO LUCKY!

Lucky me…

Garth would make us introduce ourselves to the rest of the group. Name. Age. Diagnosis. And how we were doing today. I'm Sam, I'd say when they'd get to me. Seventeen. Thyroid originally but with an impressive and long-settled satellite colony in my lungs. And I'm doing okay.

Once we got around the circle, Garth always asked if anyone wanted to share. And then began the circle jerk of support: everyone talking about fighting and battling and winning and shrinking and scanning. To be fair to Garth, he let us talk about dying, too. But most of them weren't dying. Most would live into adulthood, as Garth had.

(Which meant there was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that's one in five…so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.)

The only redeeming facet of Support Group was this kid named Cas, a blue-eyed, skinny guy with black hair.

And his eyes were the problem. He had some fantastically improbable eye cancer. One eye had been cut out when he was a kid, and now he wore the kind of thick glasses that made his eyes (both the real one and the glass one) preternaturally huge, like his whole head was basically just this fake eye and this real eye staring at you. From what I could gather on the rare occasions when Cas shared with the group, a recurrence had placed his remaining eye in mortal peril.

Cas and I communicated almost exclusively through sighs. Each time someone discussed anticancer diets or snorting ground-up shark fin or whatever, he'd glance over at me and sigh ever so slightly. I'd shake my head microscopically and exhale in response.

So Support Group sucked ass, and after a few weeks, I grew to be rather kicking-and-screaming about the whole affair. In fact, on the Wednesday I made the acquaintance of Dean and Jessica Moore, I had tried my level best to get out of Support Group while sitting on the couch with Bobby, trying to block out the old coot's ramblings about how it was good for me to actually be out in the world and interacting instead of hiding away in his house, by burying myself into a book.

"I'm not going back to the support group."

"One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities." Bobby stated.

"Where'd you read that…Hunter's Weekly?"

"I'm just saying that this could a great opportunity for you to make some friends. Being perfectly honest, Sam, you don't exactly have any, and teenagers should. You're not a little kid anymore. You should be out there living your life."

"If you want me to be a teenager, don't send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot."

"You don't _take _pot, for starters."

"See, that's the kind of thing I'd know if you got me a fake ID."

"You're going to Support Group."

"UGGGGGGGGGGGGG."

"Sam, you deserve a life." Bobby stated.

That shut me up, although I failed to see how attendance at Support Group met the definition of life. Still, I agreed to go.

I went to Support Group for the same reason that I'd once allowed nurses with a mere eighteen months of graduate education to poison me with exotically named chemicals: I wanted to make my Dad and Uncle happy. There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you're seventeen, and that's having a kid who bites it from cancer.

* * *

Bobby pulled into the circular driveway behind the church at 4:56. I pretended to fiddle with my oxygen tank for a second just to kill time.

"Do you want me to carry it in for you?" He asked softly.

"No, it's fine." I said with a slight smile, hoping to offer a little reassurance to the man who was clearly having a hard time of it at the minute. I hated what the cancer was doing to Bobby. Because that's the thing about cancer, it doesn't just affect the person who has it, it affects everyone around them too (like a modern day plague). It was clear that Bobby hated having to force me to come to the Support Group, because he hated seeing me beaten down like this.

The cylindrical green tank only weighed a few pounds, and I had this little steel cart to wheel it around behind me. It delivered two litres of oxygen to me each minute through a cannula, a transparent tube that split just beneath my neck, wrapped behind my ears, and then reunited in my nostrils. The contraption was necessary because my lungs sucked at being lungs.

"I'm proud of you, Sam." He said as I got out.

"Thanks, Bobby." I walked off, trailing my oxygen tank behind me.

"Make some friends!" I heard him say through the rolled-down window of his old Jeep as I opened the door to the church.

* * *

I didn't want to take the elevator because taking the elevator is a Last Days kind of activity at Support Group, so I took the stairs.

Grabbing a cookie from the table, I also poured some poured some lemonade into a Dixie cup before turning to find a seat.

A girl was staring at me.

I was quite sure I'd never seen her before. Petite with blue eyes and long, blonde haired that flowed past her shoulders in loose curls. She looked younger than me, maybe by a year or two.

I looked away, suddenly conscious of my myriad insufficiencies. I was wearing old jeans, a grey t-shirt that had been white many moons ago and a tatty dark red plaid shirt that hung loosely from bony shoulders. Furthermore, I resembled a chipmunk in the way that my cheeks appeared almost puffed, a tedious side effect of treatment. And yet—I cut a glance to her, and her eyes were still on me.

It occurred to me why they call it eye contact.

I walked into the circle and sat down next to Cas, two seats away from the girl. I glanced again. She was still watching me.

Look, let me just say it: She was hot. A non hot girl stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot girl...well.

It was then that another new face appeared, taking the empty seat next to the blonde girl who was staring at me.

The boy immediately slumped down, dwarfing the moulded plastic chair. Like me he seemed tall, with lightish brown hair. He sat with his tailbone against the edge of the chair, his posture aggressively poor, one hand half in the pocket of the long, brown leather jacket he was wearing.

Quick check...

Yep, she's still looking over at me. Although she is doing it in short glances now.

I pulled out my phone and clicked it so it would display the time: 4:59. The circle filled in with the unlucky twelve-to-eighteens, and then Garth started us out with the serenity prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. The girl was still staring at me. What am I supposed to do in this situation?

Finally, I decided that the proper strategy was to stare back. So I looked over and maintained her eyes contact as Garth acknowledged for the thousandth time his ball-lessness etc., and soon it was a staring contest. After a while the girl gave a giggly smile before her blue eyes glanced away. When she looked back at me, I flicked my eyebrows up to say, _I win_.

The new boy looked between us with a sort of mischievous expression before turning slightly to the girl and jabbing her slightly with his elbow on the arm. When she turned to him, he raised his eyebrows twice before grinning as if to say _I can see you two flirting_.

The girl rolled her eyes before crossing her arms.

Garth continued and then finally it was time for the introductions. "Cas, perhaps you'd like to go first today. I know you're facing a challenging time."

"Yeah." Cas said. "I'm Cas. I'm seventeen. And it's looking like I have to get surgery in a couple weeks, after which I'll be blind. Not to complain or anything because I know a lot of us have it worse, but yeah, I mean, being blind does sort of suck. My girlfriend helps, though. And friends like Dean." He nodded toward the boy, who now had a name. "So, yeah," Cas continued. He was looking at his hands, which he'd folded into each other like the top of a tepee. "There's nothing you can do about it."

"We're here for you, Cas." Garth said. "Let Cas hear it, guys."

And then we all, in a monotone, said, "We're here for you, Cas."

There were five others before they got to her. She smiled a little when her turn came. Her voice was...well amazing. "My name is Jessica Moore." she said. "I'm sixteen. I don't have cancer, I'm just here today at my brother's request."

"That's great to hear that you're supporting him." Garth smiled before turning to the newly identified Dean and motioning for him to introduce himself.

"Name's Dean Moore. I'm seventeen and I'm an aquarius. I enjoy sunsets, long walks on the beach, and frisky women." He cockily grinned. "I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a while back but that cleared. My Mom thought I needed to get out more...so here I am."

Sounds familiar...

"And how are you feeling?" Garth asked.

"Oh, I'm grand." Dean Moore smiled with a corner of his mouth. "I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend."

When it was my turn, I said, "My name is Sam. I'm seventeen. Thyroid with mets in my lungs. I'm okay."

The hour proceeded apace: Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost; hope was clung to; families were both celebrated and denounced; it was agreed that friends just didn't get it; tears were shed; comfort proffered. Neither of the Moore siblings nor I spoke again until Garth said, "Dean, perhaps you'd like to share your fears with the group."

"My fears?"

"Yes."

"I fear oblivion," he said without a moment's pause. "I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark."

"Too soon," Cas said, cracking a smile.

"Was that insensitive?" Dean asked. "I can be pretty blind to other people's feelings."

Cas was laughing, but Garth raised a chastening finger and said, "Dean, please. Let's return to you and your struggles. You said you fear oblivion?"

"I did," Dean answered.

Garth seemed lost. "Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that?"

I hadn't been in proper school in three years. Dad and Bobby were effectively my only friends (which sounds sad when you say it like that). My third friend (at a push) would probably be Cas (if he classed me as his).

I existed. I was a fairly shy person—not the hand-raising type.

And yet, just this once, I decided to speak. I half raised my hand and Garth, his delight evident, immediately said, "Sam!" I was, I'm sure he assumed, opening up. Becoming Part Of The Group.

I looked over at Dean Moore, who looked back at me. "There will come a time," I said, "when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this"—I gestured encompassingly—"will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does."

After I finished, there was quite a long period of silence. My eyes fell to Jessica as I watched a smile spread all the way across her face.

I smiled back.

None of us said anything for the rest of Support Group. At the end, we all had to hold hands (the gayest part of the group, after Garth's hand puppet Mr. Fizzles) and Garth led us in a prayer. "Lord Jesus Christ, we are gathered here in Your heart, literally in Your heart, as cancer survivors. You and You alone know us as we know ourselves. Guide us to life and the Light through our times of trial. We pray for Cas's eyes, for Michael's and Jamie's blood, for Dean's bones, for Sam's lungs, for James's throat. We pray that You might heal us and that we might feel Your love, and Your peace, which passes all understanding. And we remember in our hearts those whom we knew and loved who have gone home to you: Maria and Kade and Joseph and Haley and Abigail and Angelina and Taylor and Gabriel and . . ."

It was a long list. The world contains a lot of dead people. And while Garth droned on, reading the list from a sheet of paper because it was too long to memorize, I kept my eyes closed, trying to think prayerfully but mostly imagining the day when my name would find its way onto that list, all the way at the end when everyone had stopped listening.

When Garth was finished, we said this stupid mantra together—LIVING OUR BEST LIFE TODAY—and it was over.

Jessica Moore got up out of her chair and walked over to me. "What's your name?" she asked.

"Sam."

"You got a surname, or is it just Sam?" She smirked.

"Sam Winchester." Jessica was just about to say something else when Dean walked over with Cas in tow. She turned to her brother before resting a hand on Cas' shoulder. "See, I told you it would be fine."

"You've done it. It's out there." Dean nodded. "It may be extremely bleak, but it's all done with. If you hadn't of came out and admitted it, you probably would have had to tell Mr. Fizzles, so you know, silver lining and all."

Jessica leaned in towards Cas so she thought I couldn't hear. "He's a regular?" I couldn't hear Cas' comment.

Dean clasped Cas by both shoulders and then took a half step away from him. "Tell..."

"Sam." I filled in his blank.

"Sam...about clinic."

Cas leaned a hand against the snack table and focused his huge eye on me. "Okay, so I went into clinic this morning, and I was telling my surgeon that I'd rather be deaf than blind. And he said, 'It doesn't work that way,' and I was, like, 'Yeah, I realize it doesn't work that way; I'm just saying I'd rather be deaf than blind if I had the choice, which I realize I don't have,' and he said, 'Well, the good news is that you won't be deaf,' and I was like, 'Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn't going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.'"

"He sounds like a winner," I said. "I'm gonna try to get me some eye cancer just so I can make this guy's acquaintance."

"Good luck with that. All right, I should go. Hannah's waiting for me. I gotta look at her a lot while I can."

"Counterinsurgence tomorrow?" Dean asked.

"Definitely." Cas turned and walked off with Dean.

Jessica shook her head before turning to me. "I don't know which one's the bigger saddo?"

I smirked.

She continued to look at me.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

Jessica half smiled. "You seem nice. I like nice people, I feel that there's not enough of them on our little big planet." There was a brief pause. "So...you've clearly thought after what happens after all of this. I mean...as you pointed out, all of this will end in oblivion. It is inevitable."

I nodded.

"My brother fears oblivion, yet in a way, I also think he quite likes the idea of it." Jessica sighed. "He'd been fighting for...well it seemed like forever at the time. Just endless days of watching him putting on this brave face for Mom and for me...but anyway...you should come round to ours sometime...or how about now even?"

"Are you sure your brother wouldn't have something to say about that. I mean...for all you know, I could be some kind of axe murderer."

She nodded. "True enough, Sam Winchester." Jessica walked past me, her blonde hair blowing slightly backwards as she made her way through the door into the hallway.

Grabbing the handle of my oxygen tank, I tilted it onto its wheels before following her upstairs, losing ground as I made my way up slowly, stairs not be a field of expertise for my lungs.

And then we were out of Jesus's heart and in the parking lot, the spring air just on the cold side of perfect, the late-afternoon light heavenly in its hurtfulness.

Bobby wasn't there yet, which was unusual, because Bobby was almost always waiting for me. I glanced around and saw that a tall, curvy brunette girl had Cas pinned against the stone wall of the church, kissing him rather aggressively. They were close enough to me that I could hear the weird noises of their mouths together, and I could hear him saying, "Always," and her saying, "Always," in return.

Suddenly standing next to me, Dean half whispered, "They're big believers in PDA."

"What's with the 'always'?" The slurping sounds intensified, making me want to throw up.

"Always is their thing. They'll always love each other and whatever. I would conservatively estimate they have texted each other the word always four million times in the last year."

"Leave them alone." Jess hit her brother lightly on the arm as she walked over. "It's love."

"It's disgusting." Dean followed up.

"Whatever, just go get the car." Jess stated.

"You mean _my_ car." He grinned with a smug grin that he had obviously only deployed to purposely annoy his little sister before walking off.

A couple more cars drove up, taking Michael and Alisa away. It was just Jess and me now, watching Cas and Hannah, who were still eating each other's faces off and grabbing each other in...interesting places, as if they were not leaning against a place of worship.

"Imagine taking that last drive to the hospital," I said quietly. "The last time you'll ever drive a car."

Buzzkill much?

Without looking over at me, Jessica said, "You're killing my vibe here, Sam Winchester. I'm trying to observe young love in its many-splendored awkwardness." Jessica reached into a pocket and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes.

"You smoke?" I asked. "Seriously?...You think that's cool?"

"Well for one, Sam Winchester...they're not mine." She answered.

"So they're not yours, but they're in your pocket." I paused for a few seconds. "...but seriously?! Your brother had **_freaking cancer_**, and now you're giving money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire some yourself while also giving your brother yet more cancer. Let me just assure you that not being able to breath...**sucks!**" I paused once again. "That's your hamartia."

"A hamartia?" She asked.

"A fatal flaw." I explained.

"Well I hate to break it to you, Sam Winchester. Even after you gave that amazing speech, like I said, they're not mine." Jessica explained. "They're my brothers."

"Dean smokes?" I furrowed an eyebrow. "But Dean had cancer."

"I'll let him explain that to you."

Turning away from her, I stepped toward the curb as I heard a car start down the street. It was Bobby. He'd clearly been waiting for me to make friends or whatever the hell the purpose of sending me to the support group was.

I felt this weird mix of disappointment and anger welling up inside of me. I don't even know what the feeling was, really, just that there

Stood in my beat up sneakers on the edge of the curb, Bobby pulled up alongside.

"He says it's a metaphor." Jess shouted across.

I glanced at her, noticing her stuff the box of cigarettes back into her pocket before I turned back to the car and tapped on the window.

Bobby rolled it down.

"Can I go to a _friend's_ house?" I asked.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean Moore wasn't a terrible driver, he just drove fast.

Really fast.

Sat in the back of his 67' Chevy Impala, the lack of seatbelts meant that I found myself holding onto the headrest of the passenger seat in a vice like grip to keep myself upright. Having dumped my oxygen cart in the footwell when I first got into the car, I had now positioned it between my legs so that it wouldn't fall over.

Another thing about Dean Moore was that he also liked to play music loud.

Really loud.

The first thing I noticed was they were all old cassette tapes. This struck me as odd before I remembered the car's age. The fact that they were cassettes obviously meant that none of the songs that played were older than like 1979.

I was keenly aware during the journey to the siblings' house that my crap lungs weren't really cut out for being in the car with someone with a driving style like Dean's.

Jessica was unfazed by it all, clearly used to riding in the car with her brother.

"So are you in school?" Dean asked, breaking the silence that had plagued the car.

Generally your parents tend to pull you out of school when they think you're going to bite it. This had been no different with Dad and Bobby. As soon as I got my diagnosis that night, it was bye bye school, which upset me because I had always enjoyed it. I may not have had many friends, but I was apparently 'going somewhere' according to my teachers. Well...I was...

"No." I shook my head. "Used to be."

"When did your rents pull you out?" Jess asked as she turned in her seat so that she was looking at me.

I considered lying, but in the end I told the truth. "Four years ago."

"Four years?" Jess and Dean both asked, astonished.

I nodded.

"So how'd it happen then?" Dean asked.

"Well...I was diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. I collapsed at my Uncle's house. He thought I just had some kind of stomach bug or something like that...but no...it was the cancer making itself known. They told me it was incurable, then threw me into surgery. Radical neck dissection, followed by radiation, then chemo for my lungs. The tumors did shrink, but they grew back." I paused. "Then when I was fourteen, my lungs first began to fill up with water. I was on every drug imaginable just to try and make me forget that I was inevitably dying from the water in my lungs. Practically feeling like I was drowning every day. That lasted a couple of months before one night I woke up, and I just couldn't breathe. No air was physically getting into my lungs. It was scary as hell because I didn't have enough air to scream out for my Uncle. I ended up having to grab the the biggest book I could reach, which thankfully was this thick hardback and threw it as hard as I could at the wall. My Uncle's always been really panicked about hearing any form of sound from my room because...you know...dying of cancer and all, so noises can obviously mean anything. He came running in and rushed me to hospital. I had pneumonia along with the water that had filled up." I paused once again, finding that the memories of that night still stung. I remembered the times I was conscious that night, seeing Dad and Bobby in my room. They were both crying, which was really weird to see. I had never seen Bobby cry, and Dad always seemed so strong. But that night, I saw a different side to him. He was knelt by the side of my bed and told me, 'You can let go, Sam.'. I remembered my Dad's broken voice. The voice that I hadn't heard since the night my Mom died. I remembered being unable to catch my breath as my lungs desperately gasped, pulling me out of the bed as they tried to find a position in which they could get air. I remembered not wanting to be awake. "Everyone thought I done, but my Cancer Doctor Madison managed to get some of the fluid out of my lungs, and then the antibiotics they'd given me for the pneumonia actually started to work. When I woke up, they put me onto one of those experimental trials. You know, the ones that never work."

"What was it called?" Jessica asked.

"Phalanxifor. It's like molecules that have been designed to attach themselves to cancer cells and slow their growth."

"Don't they have like ridiculously bad odds?" Dean followed up.

I nodded. "It didn't work in about 70 percent of people. But it worked in me. The tumors shrank. And they stayed shrunk."

"But you're still dying?" He asked.

I nodded. "Yeah. The Phalanxifor has gave me some time, I don't know how much, but it's something at least...I suppose. On the bright side, my mets haven't really grown in the past eighteen months." I added. "My lungs still suck at being lungs though, but I luckier than some people...right? People have had it worse, so who am I to complain?"

Dean smiled.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing." He responded.

"No...tell me."

"Even when you're taking four billion tablets a day, struggling for breath from walking the distance between the sidewalk outside the church and my car, and having to drag that thing behind you all the time." He motioned to the oxygen tank. "You still believe that other people have it worse." He smiled once again.

"So, are you gonna go back to school?" Jessica asked.

"I actually can't." I explained, "Because I already got my GED, no school would take me back. So I'm taking classes at KCC," which is a community college in Sioux Falls.

"A college boy, huh?" Dean said, nodding. "That explains the aura of why I feel so unintelligent around you." He smirked at me.

Leaning forward slightly, I shoved his upper arm.

Dean smirked before he turned the dial on the dashboard causing AC/DC to blare through the car, even louder than it was previously.


	3. Chapter 3

Reaching their house, I followed Dean and Jess inside. A wooden plaque in the entryway was engraved in cursive with the words Home Is Where the Heart Is, and the entire house turned out to be festooned in such observations. Good Friends Are Hard to Find and Impossible to Forget read an illustration above the coat rack. True Love Is Born from Hard Times promised a needlepointed pillow in their antique-furnished living room. Dean saw me reading.

"Mom calls them Encouragements," he explained. "She likes them."

Jess smirked.

Walking into the kitchen, a woman was stood washing dishes at the sink. She was blonde too with long hair with curled past her shoulders. Much like Jess'. She didn't seem too surprised by my arrival as she turned to look at me.

"This is Sam Winchester." Jess introduced.

"Just Sam." I added.

"Nice to meet you, sweetie. I'm Mary." She answered with a smile before turning to look at Dean. "How was the support group?"

"Incredible." Dean answered in a sarcastic tone.

Mary simply rolled her eyes before turning back to me. "Sam, do you enjoy it?"

I paused a second, trying to figure out if my response should be calibrated to please Dean and Jess or their Mom. "Most of the people are really nice," I finally said.

"That's exactly what we found with families at Memorial when we were in the thick of it with Dean's treatment," She stated. "Everybody was so kind. Strong, too." Mary paused. "I hope you're joining us for dinner?"

I once again paused for a second, not wanting to intrude where I might not be wanted.

Jess turned to me with an encouraging smile. "You worry too much." She smirked. "Sam's staying, he's just too polite."

"There's nothing wrong with being polite. Dean, you might learn something from Sam." Mary responded before looking at her son.

"Hilarious." Dean scoffed before smiling. "Right well I'm going downstairs. Coming Sam?"

"Sure." I nodded.

He motioned with his head and I followed him down the hallway. Dean led me down carpeted stairs to a huge basement bedroom. A shelf at my eye level reached all the way around the room, and it was stuffed solid with karting memorabilia: dozens of trophies with gold plastic men sat in carts or tiny little helmets or wheels. There were also lots of signed gloves and scale helmets.

"I used to race karts." He explained.

"You must've been pretty good." I commented.

"I wasn't bad." Dean answered.

"Did you stop because of the cancer?" I asked.

"Sorta'." He paused for a second, as if thinking, before walking over to the couch and sitting down on it. Dean hovered his hand over his jeans, before pulling up the hem of the jean's leg to reveal a prosthetic one underneath.

My eyes widened slightly before I thought back to what he had previously said. "The Osteosarcoma."

"So you know about it?" Dean asked, rolling down the jeans once again.

I nodded. "Sometimes it takes a limb to check you out."

"Pretty much." Dean nodded before standing up. "There's not much calling for drivers with one leg, so I had to give it up. Not that I was much good in the end anyway. Whatever I did once have out on the track wasn't there after." He explained. "I still fix up cars though. As a hobby though. Are you okay?"

I'd taken a seat on the corner of his couch. I felt stupid for having done so; but I just got kind of tired easily when I had to stand a lot. I'd stood in the living room and then there had been the stairs, and then more standing, which was quite a lot of standing for me, and I didn't want to faint or anything. "I'm fine," I said. "Just listening."

At that moment, I heard the sound of Jess' voice as she walked down the stairs into the basement. "I didn't know what you drank so I just grabbed you a coke." She stated before handing me the can.

"That's great." I smiled. "Thanks."

"No problem." She then threw one to Dean who caught it one-handed. "So. You have siblings?" Jess asked.

I shook my head no.

"So what's your story?" She followed up with another question before sitting down next to me.

"I already told you my story. I was diagnosed when—"

"No, not your cancer story. Your story. Interests, hobbies, passions, weird fetishes, etcetera."

"Um," I tried to think of something.

"Don't tell me you're one of those people who becomes their disease. I know so many people like that. It's disheartening. Like, cancer is in the growth business, right? The taking-people-over business. But surely you haven't let it succeed prematurely." It occurred to me that perhaps I had. I struggled with how to pitch myself to the Moore siblings, which enthusiasms to embrace, and in the silence that followed it occurred to me that I wasn't very interesting, and everything that was in anyway interesting would not be a good thing to blurt out if I didn't want them to think I was crazy. "I am pretty unextraordinary."

"I reject that out of hand. Think of something you like. The first thing that comes to mind."

"Um. Reading?"

"What do you read?"

"Everything. I'll pretty much read anything." I answered.

"Do you write poetry, too?"

"No. I don't write."

"So what's your favorite book?"

"Um," I said.

My favorite books, by a wide margin, were the Supernatural books by Carver Edlund, but I didn't like to tell people about it. Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like the Supernatural books, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your love for them feels like a betrayal. They weren't even good books or anything; it was just the way that the Carver Edlund writes his characters that makes me feel so connected to the series.

Even so, I told the siblings. "I don't have a favourite. There's this series of Supernatural books that I like." I said.

"Does it feature zombies?" Dean asked.

"Sorta, but only in some books." I said.

"Stormtroopers?"

I shook my head. "It's not Star Wars."

"Not interested then." He smirked.

"I'll read them." Jess smiled. "But..." She reached down under the coffee table and pulled out a book. "You have to read this." Jess held up the book.

I looked at the title. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer?" I furrowed an eyebrow.

_I am never gonna' hear the end to this once Bobby and Dad see what I'm reading. The comments will be endless._

She nodded. "And remember, think WWBD?"

Confused, I looked to Dean. "What would Buffy do." He mouthed.

I turned back to Jess and nodded.

"Dinner's ready!" Mary shouted from upstairs.

"Coming, Mom!" Jess shouted back in response before handing me the book. As she did, her hand touched mine. "Cold." Jess said, pressing a finger to my pale wrist.

"Not cold so much as underoxygenated," I answered.

"I love it when you talk medical to me," She smirked before offering a hand and pulling me up. Jess then proceeded to not let go of my hand until we reached the stairs.

* * *

As we pulled up outside of Bobby's, Dean clicked the radio off.

Jess turned to me and as she did, the air thickened. She was probably thinking about kissing me, and I was definitely thinking about kissing her. Wondering if I wanted to. I wasn't exactly popular back at school, so I hadn't kissed many girls.

Looking at her, she was _so_ beautiful.

"Sam Winchester." She began. "It has been a real pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"It's been a pleasure to meet you two, Jess." I said outloud before realising that I had called her Jess instead of Jessica.

_Shit!_

This however didn't go down badly at all. Jess giggled, her cheeks going ever so slightly pinker as she blushed before she smiled once again._ "_May I see you again?" She asked. There was an cute nervousness to her voice.

I smiled. "Sure."

"Tomorrow?" she asked.

"Patience, grasshopper," Dean counseled from the driver's seat, clearly knowing exactly how to wind his little sister up with his comments. "You don't want to seem overeager."

Jess hit him on the arm.

I smirked. "Sure."

There was a pause. "Oh...I don't have your mobile number." She grabbed a piece of paper from the glove box and a pen. "Here." She handed me them.

I quickly jotted down my number before handing everything back to her.

She smiled once again. "I'll see you around, Sam Winchester."

I nodded before opening the car door and getting out, dragging my oxygen cart behind me. Before the door closed, I heard the sound of Dean making fake gagging noises before the sound of Jess hitting him once again.

I smirked before walking up the driveway and into the house.


End file.
